Aug
07
2010
Spurgeon On Being “Fashionable”
At the beginning of Unfashionable, I print a quote from Charles Spurgeon that encapsulates everything I say in the book. A friend of mine recently asked me where the quote came from. After tracking it down, I was once again struck at how powerful Spurgeon’s words are and how desperately we need to pay attention to them.
He preached these words on April 18, 1875 during a sermon on Joshua 24:15:
The great guide of the world is fashion and it’s god is respectability–two phantoms at which brave men laugh! How many of you look around on society to know what to do? You watch the general current and then float upon it! You study the popular breeze and shift your sails to suit it. True men do not so! You ask, “Is it fashionable? If it is fashionable, it must be done.” Fashion is the law of multitudes, but it is nothing more than the common consent of fools.